Rudy Giuliani said New Year’s Eve at Mar-A-Lago that he would like to take a starring role in the Senate impeachment trial, but President Donald Trump’s allies just wish he would go away.
The president’s personal attorney said Tuesday that he wants to turn the trial into a racketeering prosecution of Joe Biden, but MSNBC contributor Natasha Bertrand suggested that Giuliani’s bluster could just be a distraction from his own legal problems.
“A lot of the president’s allies feel like Rudy Giuliani is a big liability,” Bertrand said. “He is currently under criminal investigation in the Southern District of New York for his foreign lobbying work for Ukraine, related to his business dealings with foreign governments, including Ukraine.”
That complicates his defense of the president, who was impeached last month over his efforts with Giuliani to pressure Ukraine into announcing an investigation of Biden and his son.
“There is a lot here that could provide potential exposure,” Bertrand said, “not just politically, but also potentially legally for the president, who may or may not have, depending on the case that Democrats have put forward here, who they say offered a bribe essentially to Ukraine, and that he was involved in the conspiracy with Rudy Giuliani and some of his aides over the course of the last year to have interference in the 2020 election by getting Ukraine to investigate his political rival.”
Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas, who was indicted with Igor Fruman in October, has been begging to testify before the House Intelligence Committee about his own role in the Ukraine scheme, and Bertrand said that could prove highly problematic for the president.
“Lev Parnas is trying to cooperate with the House Intelligence Committee now, could provide documents, could provide recordings, the contents of an iPhone he wants to turn over,” Bertrand said. “There’s a lot here that could come back to bite the president, especially because Parnas, the Giuliani associate, is very angry that the president has distanced himself from both Giuliani and Parnas who were doing this work for him in Ukraine to try to get dirt on his political rival. So Trump’s allies are very eager to have him distance himself from Giuliani, but he was just at Mar-A-Lago for the New Year’s Eve celebration.”